Author Guidelines

A. General Requirements

Every submission to the International Journal of Research on English Teaching and Applied Linguistics must meet the following minimum requirements.

1. The manuscript is written in English, using either consistent British or consistent American spelling, and has been language edited to a professional standard before submission.
2. The manuscript is prepared using the current IJRETAL manuscript template, which sets the page size, margins, fonts, heading levels, and the format of tables and figures.
3. Length is counted in words rather than pages, because a page count varies with font, spacing, and margins. A research article is 6,000 to 8,000 words excluding the abstract, the references, and the appendices. A short report is 3,000 to 4,000 words. A book review is 1,500 to 2,000 words. A manuscript outside these limits is considered only where the author gives a reason in the covering letter and the editors agree before submission.
4. References are managed with Mendeley, Zotero, EndNote, or comparable software, and follow the seventh edition of the APA style for both in text citations and the reference list. Field codes should be left intact in the submitted file so that the Editorial Office can verify the entries.
5. The similarity index, calculated with the reference list and quoted material excluded, is below 20 per cent, and no single source accounts for more than 5 per cent.
6. Two files are uploaded: the complete manuscript, and an anonymised version from which author names, affiliations, ORCID iDs, acknowledgements, funding details, and self identifying citations have been removed. Both files are in Microsoft Word format. PDF is not accepted for review.
7. Continuous line numbering is enabled in the file submitted for review, so that reviewers can cite specific passages.

B. Structure of the Manuscript

The manuscript must follow the structure below.

1. Title. A specific, informative title of no more than 15 words, written in sentence case, capitalising only the first word and proper nouns. The title should name the construct studied, the population, and the setting where possible. Acronyms and abbreviations that are not standard in the field are not used.

2. Author information. Full names without academic titles, superscript numbered affiliations, an ORCID iD for every author, and the institutional email of the corresponding author.

3. Abstract. One unindented paragraph of 200 to 250 words, containing no citations, tables, figures, or undefined abbreviations. The abstract states why the topic matters, the gap in the literature or the discrepancy between theory and practice that motivates the study, the purpose and research questions, the design and participants and instruments and analytic procedure including sample size, the main findings with their direction and magnitude, and one implication for practice, policy, or theory.

4. Keywords. Three to five keywords, arranged alphabetically and separated by semicolons. Keywords should be terms a reader would search for and should not simply repeat the title.

5. Introduction. Set the study in context by reviewing the knowledge that defines the current state of the field and stating what that work has not resolved. Name the gap explicitly, distinguishing an empirical gap from a theoretical one, then state the purpose, the research questions, the theoretical framework, and the specific contribution claimed. A literature review that only lists what previous authors did is not sufficient.

6. Method. Give enough detail for an independent researcher to repeat the study. Cover the research design and its justification, the setting and participants and sampling technique, the instruments with validity and reliability evidence obtained in the present sample, the data collection procedure, the analytic procedure including software and version, the steps taken to establish trustworthiness or validity, and the ethical approval and consent arrangements. Textbook definitions of research methods are not included.

7. Findings. Present the results only, organised by theme or by statistical model, using subheadings that name the substantive finding rather than the research question number. Do not interpret, do not cite literature, and do not repeat in prose the figures that a table already carries.

8. Discussion. Interpret the findings, answer each research question directly, position the results against the studies reviewed earlier by naming those the findings converge with and those they contradict, state what the study adds, and draw out the implications. Findings and Discussion are separate sections, since a combined section tends to produce description without interpretation.

9. Conclusion. State what the study found and what it contributes without repeating numerical results, then state the limitations plainly and the directions for further research that follow from them.

10. Declarations. All of the following are compulsory, and where an item does not apply the standard negative statement is given rather than the item being omitted: acknowledgements, author contributions using the CRediT taxonomy, funding, conflict of interest, ethical approval and informed consent, data availability, and the declaration on the use of generative artificial intelligence.

11. References. A minimum of 25 sources, of which at least 80 per cent are journal articles and at least 70 per cent were published in the last 10 years. Author self citation must not exceed 20 per cent. Every available DOI is presented as a full https link, every reference has been checked against the publisher record, and every source cited in the text appears in the list and vice versa. Footnotes are not used.

12. Appendices. Included only where they carry material a reader needs in order to evaluate or replicate the study, labelled Appendix A, Appendix B, and so on, and referred to in the body of the article. Appendices are excluded from the word count.